Chapter 2 Configuration, Instances, and
Nodes

The previous chapter introduced you to some of the new concepts
in Web Server 7.0. The primary task of an administrator is to configure and
manage the runtime services of the Server. This chapter describes the different
ways by which you can manage Configurations and how you can deploy your Configurations
to get an instance started on a node.

Overview

Instance refers to the environment of a web server daemon on a
given node, including its configuration, log files and other runtime artifacts
such as lock databases, caches and temporary files.

Node is a network resource, such as a server or a host. In
a typical data center, a network of nodes is called a server
farm. This section discusses how nodes can be configured using
the administration console GUI.

You can deploy one or many instances to a node. Also the same
instance can be deployed to multiple nodes and can form as a part of different
clusters.

For management purposes, an instance can be started, stopped,
started, or dynamically re-configured.

Managing Configurations

Creating a Configuration

In order to start using the web server, you need to create
a Configuration.

To create a new Configuration, perform the following tasks:

Click Configuration
tab .

Click New
button

The wizard guides you through the settings available for creating
a Configuration. The following sections provide a description of the fields
available in wizard pages:

Step 1 – Set Configuration
Information

This wizard page allows you to set the generic information
for the new configuration

Set the following parameters in the wizard page:

Configuration
Name — Add a new unique name for your configuration.

Server
Name — Add a server name for the new configuration. It can
be same as the configuration name.

Document
Root — Enter a valid document root, wherein all the deployed
web applications maintain their directories. The default value is ../docs
You can enter the path of any valid directory on the server

Step 3 — Configure Java,
CGI and SHTML

This wizard page allows you to configure properties related
to Java/CGI and SHTML.

Set the following parameters in the wizard page:

Java — Enabled. By default Java is enabled.Warning: Do not disable Java if you need to deploy Java based web
applications using this configuration. Set the home for Java SE directory.
The default value is the directory pointing to the bundled Java SE directory.
You can select either the default Java SE directory or specify a new path.

Duplicating a Server Configuration

You can copy a server configuration and create a new configuration.
The newly copied configuration is identical to the existing configuration.
However, the new configuration will not have any instance even though the
configuration from which it has been copied has instances.

Deleting the Server Configuration

Note –

You cannot delete a configuration, if instances
of the configuration are deployed to nodes. Even if the instances are deployed
and not running, you are not allowed to delete the server configuration. Stop
the running instances and undeploy them to delete the configuration.

Re-Configuring Server Instances

When you make changes to the Configuration, you do not need
to restart the instance for some cases. Administration Server supports re-configuring
the server instances to pull changes made to the configuration store. In this
Configuration changes are reflected on instances without a server restart.
Only dynamically re-configurable changes in the configuration will be affected.

Note –

Changes in the user, temp-path, log, thread-pool,
pkcs11, statistics, CGI, DNS, DNS-cache, file-cache, ACL-cache, SSL-session-cache,
access-log-buffer, and JVM (except log-level ) settings will not come in to
effect after a reconfiguration. Any such changes that require restart will
be logged when a reconfiguration is performed. Reconfiguring the file cache
requires a server restart.

Click Nodes
tab to view the list of nodes configured in the server.

Select the node by selecting the node
name checkbox

Click Reconfig
Instances button to open a page window, listing all the instances
deployed on that node.

Select the instance and click Reconfig Instances button to reconfigure
the instance.

Check if the status of the instance is
Running and close the window.

Note –

Using CLI

For re-configuring the server instance through CLI, execute
the following command: